Gunther Wittenberg, Resistance Theology in the Old Testament: Collected Essays (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2007).

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1 Gerald West School of Religion, Philosophy, and Classics & Ujamaa Centre University of KwaZulu-Natal South Africa Contextual Bible Study: Method Introduction From January 2015 a significant workshop was held in Bogotá, Colombia, entitled Networking contextual Bible reading project: structures of violence. Among those hosting the workshop were CEBI (Centro de Estudos Bíblicos) (Brazil) and the Ujamaa Centre for Community Development and Research (South Africa). These organisations have a long history, with CEBI having been established in 1979, and the Ujamaa Centre in The Ujamaa Centre, the base from which I do much of my biblical studies work, and CEBI have related to each other since the early 1980s. Gunther Wittenberg, a South African biblical scholar standing within the liberation theology tradition, 1 visited CEBI in 1988, and I visited CEBI for the first time in 1990, and there have been many other visits in both directions during this time. Indeed, among the factors in the formation of the Ujamaa Centre was the model that CEBI provided. 2 The purpose of the workshop in Colombia was, as the title suggests, a way of networking those who were doing forms of contextual Bible reading. The diversity of participation required regular clarification of the forms of contextual Bible reading being experienced through this workshop. But as this was a process driven workshop, theoretical and methodological clarification were not the first moment of the workshop. The workshop was structured within a See-Judge-Act process (see below). Each of the three components (See-Judge-Act) was itself imbedded in a sharing of our local spiritualities and in corporate spiritual formation together. The See component began with a recognition and sharing of our different realities. So the first day and a half were devoted to a series of liturgical and group-process exercises, enabling participants to get to know each other and to share their contextual realities. The second, third, and fourth day were dedicated to particular experiences of contextual Bible reading, as part of the process of the Judge moment within the See-Judge-Act process. The workshop offered three in-depth experiences with three different, yet related, forms of contextual Bible reading. The first was the intercultural form of contextual Bible reading that had been practised in Colombia, 3 including a number of local 1 Gunther Wittenberg, Resistance Theology in the Old Testament: Collected Essays (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2007). 2 Gerald O. West, "Locating Contextual Bible Study within Praxis," Diaconia 4(2013). 3 Daniel S. Schipani, Martien Brinkman, and Hans Snoek, eds., New Perspectives on Intercultural Reading of the Bible: Hermeneutical Explorations in Honor of Hans De Wit 1

2 Colombian participants from this project. The second was a visit to a number of the Casitas Bíblicas projects located on the outskirts of Bogotá. The third was the Contextual Bible Study form of contextual Bible reading of the Ujamma Centre from South Africa, 4 and the fourth was da Leitura Popular da Bíblia form of contextual Bible reading practised by CEBI. 5 In each case workshop participants were given the opportunity to participate in and so experience each of these forms of contextual Bible reading before being offered analysis of the theoretical and methodological scaffolding of each of these forms. The experience of these different forms of contextual Bible reading generated a host of questions among participants, and so the morning of the final day, as the workshop was moving into the Act moment, was given over to theoretical and methodological reflection. In preparation for this conceptual clearing and clarification, CEBI and the Ujamaa Centre met to draft a joint presentation, recognising as we have for more than twenty five years that our theoretical and methodological commitments were very similar. The next section of this lecture draws on our presentation, focussing in particular on the work of the Ujamaa Centre. The core values We agreed that it was important to clarify our political (to use CEBI s term) or ideo-theological (to use Ujamaa s term) values. We recognised that we shared certain core values or commitments that we felt were non-negotiable. To do contextual Bible reading within our conceptualisation of this practice required a commitment to these core values. As we discussed our core values together, we drew on the long conceptual conversation that characterised our work. Within the literature of CEBI there were five core values, one for each finger of a hand. Within the literature of Ujamaa there were four or five core commitments. 6 This workshop gave us an opportunity, as was intended, both to learn from (Elkhart: Institute of Mennonite Studies, 2015). 4 See for example Gerald O. West, "Newsprint Theology: Bible in the Context of Hiv and Aids," in Out of Place: Doing Theology on the Crosscultural Brink, ed. Jione Havea and Clive Pearson (London: Equinox Publishing, 2011). 5 See for example C. Mesters, "The Use of the Bible in Christian Communities of the Common People," in The Bible and Liberation: Political and Social Hermeneutics, ed. Norman K. Gottwald and Richard A. Horsley (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1984); Carlos Mesters, Defenseless Flower: A New Reading of the Bible, trans. Francis McDonagh (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1989); Carlos Mesters, God's Project (Cape Town: The Theology Exchange Programme, nd); Carlos A. Dreher, The Walk to Emmaus (São Leopoldo: Centro de Estudos Bíblicos, 2004); Edmilson Schinelo, ed. The Bible and Popular Education; Encounters of Solidarity and Dialogue (São Leopoldo: CEBI, 2009). 6 Gerald O. West, Contextual Bible Study (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 1993); Sarojini Nadar, "Beyond the 'Ordinary Reader' and the 'Invisible Intellectual': Shifting Contextual Bible Study from Liberation Discourse to Liberation Pedagogy," Old Testament Essays 22, no. 2 (2009); Sarojini Nadar, "'Hermeneutics of Transformation?' A Critical Exploration of the Model of Social Engagement between Biblical Scholars and Faith 2

3 each other and to consolidate our reflections on our practices. As we talked together we discerned that our various core value categories could be consolidated in the form of five C s : Community, Criticality, Collaboration, Change, and Context. We also agreed, among those present, that there was a sixth C. This sixth C had already been discerned from our work within the Ujamaa Centre, 7 but remained a point of conversation among CEBI practitioners. We decided to include this sixth C in our presentation: Contestation. In what follows I offer an overview of the Ujamaa Centre s Contextual Bible Study practice, indicating how we embody these values. Here I will offer a summary of each core value, followed by reflection. In each case the formulations are those of the Ujamaa Centre and its praxis of Contextual Bible Study (CBS). 8 However, having said this, the formulations are also an attempt to capture the richness of our discussions in the multiple languages that were being used in the workshop. 1. Community Community is the beginning and goal of CBS; Community is the fabric of CBS; The communities of the organised poor, working-class, and other marginalised groups are the starting point and the primary reality of CBS; Community is also the primary objective of CBS, as CBS contributes towards the formation of redemptive communities, full of dignity, decent work, and abundant life for all. Beginning with community is not accidental; CBS work as practised by both CEBI and the Ujamaa Centre fore-grounds or privileges particular sites of the organised marginalised. In terms of African biblical scholarship, community is the subject of our biblical interpretation. 9 In theological terms, CBS is incarnational, requiring real bodies as its social location. 2. Criticality CBS facilitates a critical (structured and systemic) analysis of all aspects of life; Specifically, CBS critically analyses the self, society, and the biblical text, using a range of structured and systematic questions; Communities," in Postcolonial Perspectives in African Biblical Interpretations, ed. Musa W. Dube, Andrew M. Mbuvi, and Dora Mbuwayesango (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012). 7 Gerald O. West, "Tracing the 'Kairos' Trajectory from South Africa (1985) to Palestine (2009): Discerning Continuities and Differences," Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 143(2012). 8 I will use the abbreviation CBS from now on; we have been asked by some of the communities we work with not to call what we do Bible study, because they insist, what we do is not what we do in church. 9 Justin S. Ukpong, "Rereading the Bible with African Eyes," Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 91(1995): 5. 3

4 CBS constructs a critical dialogue between a critical reading of life (the first text) and a critical reading of the Bible (the second text). Notions of criticality are central to but contested within various forms of contextual Bible reading. In the early understandings of contextual Bible reading within both CEBI and the Ujamaa Centre we worked with strong notions of criticality, in which critical consciousness was a resource socially engaged biblical scholar brought with them into a terrain of false consciousness among the poor and marginalised. 10 However, the praxis cycle of action and reflection has generated a deeper understanding of the fragility of ideological hegemony, as we have come to recognise that subaltern sectors are less constrained at the level of thought and ideology, since they can in secluded settings speak with comparative safety, and more constrained at the level of political action and struggle, where the daily exercise of power sharply limits the options available to them. 11 So we now recognise the critical resources that are already present with organised communities of the poor and marginalised, among which the socially engaged biblical scholar brings the particular critical resources of biblical hermeneutics. In theological terms, CBS recognises the multiple gifts of the body of Christ as a whole. 3. Collaboration CBS is located within collaborative work and collaborative biblical interpretation among organised communities of the poor, working-class, and marginalised, organic intellectuals from these sectors, and socially engaged ( converted ) biblical scholars and theologians; Collaboration begins with actual work in local struggles; Collaboration then goes on to include collaborative biblical interpretation and a collaborative doing of theology, moving from embodied theology to people s theology to prophetic theology. Struggle was a key concept in South African Black Theology 12 and in South African Contextual Theology. 13 And within both forms of South African theology there was a 10 Juan Luis Segundo, "The Shift within Latin American Theology," Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 52 (1985); Gerald O. West, Biblical Hermeneutics of Liberation: Modes of Reading the Bible in the South African Context, Second Edition ed. (Maryknoll and Pietermaritzburg: Orbis Books and Cluster Publications, 1995); Dreher, The Walk to Emmaus. 11 James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990), 9; Schinelo, ed. The Bible and Popular Education; Encounters of Solidarity and Dialogue; Gerald O. West, "Africa s Liberation Theologies: An Historical-Hermeneutical Analysis," in The Changing World Religion Map: Sacred Places, Identities, Practices and Politics, ed. Stanley D. Brunn (Dordrecht, Heidelberg, New York, London: Springer, 2015). 12 Itumeleng J. Mosala, Biblical Hermeneutics and Black Theology in South Africa (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989). 13 Albert Nolan, God in South Africa: The Challenge of the Gospel (Cape Town: David Philip, 1988). 4

5 recognition of the necessity of collaboration among the different sectors that were engaged in the struggle against apartheid. While the poor, working-class, and other marginalised sectors were epistemologically privileged, 14 each of the other sectors was recognised as having a contribution to make within organised forms of collaboration. And while both these forms of South African liberation theology had rich theological resources on which to draw in doing theology collaboratively, biblical studies battled to allow ordinary non-scholarly Bible readers to be interpret with scholarly readers. 15 So collaborative biblical interpretation was a particular innovation within contextual Bible reading movements, including the Ujamaa Centre s CBS work. 4. Change CBS uses the Bible as a substantive and subjective companion to work for transformation; Transformation includes transformation of the self and society, including the church (and the religious terrain in general); The primary focus of transformation is the structural and systemic, and the primary terrain for transformation from the perspective of CBS is the ideo-theological. Contextual Bible reading is not about understanding the Bible better. The Bible is read for change. The Bible as a site of struggle itself (see value 6) is wrestled with (or re-read) until it contributes to real, substantive, systemic change. The image of wrestling is taken from Genesis 32:24, where struggling with God leads to change in Jacob s relationships. Key to our understanding of change is that personal relationships are rooted in socio-economic systems. In theological terms, CBS struggles against the dominant individualist theologies of so much of South African theology. While recognising a place for individual change, individual change can only be considered change if it contributes to and is located within systemic change. 5. Context CBS is embedded in the many layers of context, focussing on the systemic-structural dimensions of reality; CBS recognises that the self, society, and the biblical text are products of these layers or dimensions of context; Specifically, CBS offers resources to analyse the economic, cultural, political, and religious layers or dimensions of context; CBS recognises that context is dynamic, that it changes; CBS recognises that scripture is already present in contexts in which we work. Context not only reiterates the significance of community (see above), but elaborates on the intersecting layers or dimensions of reality. By making it clear that context is always 14 Per Frostin, Liberation Theology in Tanzania and South Africa: A First World Interpretation (Lund: Lund University Press, 1988), Teresa Okure, "Feminist Interpretation in Africa," in Searching the Scriptures: A Feminist Introduction, ed. Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza (New York: Crossroads, 1993); Gerald O. West and Musa W. Dube, eds., "Reading With": African Overtures, Semeia (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 1996). 5

6 religious, CBS avoids the false binary scripture/context. Theology never begins with scripture; it always begins with context, but a context that embodies particular interpretations of the Bible. And while contextual Bible reading movements, in both Brazil and South Africa, have given priority to economic dimensions of reality because it is the primary reality of the poor there has been increasing recognition of the intersectionality of marginalisations, including class, race, gender, HIV status, disability, sexuality, etc. in our work. The work of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians has been a particular resource for CBS in this regard Contestation CBS works with struggle as a key socio-theological concept; CBS recognises that struggle is a key characteristic of reality, and so CBS takes sides with the God of life against the idols of death; For CBS the primary terrain of struggle is the ideological and theological; CBS recognises that the Bible is itself contested, including biblical voices or theologies that bring life and biblical voices or theologies that bring death; CBS wrestles with the biblical text to bring forth life. The notion that the Bible is itself a site of struggle, intrinsically both life-giving and death-dealing, is deeply rooted in South African Black Theology 17 and African Women s Theology, 18 but has been an unfamiliar and uncomfortable notion within other forms of liberation theology. 19 Yet again the reality of the poor and marginalised is that the Bible lends itself to idolatry and death, 20 and so there is a greater willingness to grapple with this reality among liberation theologians. All theological frameworks bracket bits of the Bible that would destabilise the frame, 21 yet the impression given is that a particular theological frame is what the Bible says. CBS resists giving this impression, working overtly with the partiality (in both senses of the term) of both the Bible and each theological framework. 16 Musa W. Dube, ed. Other Ways of Reading: African Women and the Bible (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2001). 17 Takatso Mofokeng, "Black Christians, the Bible and Liberation," Journal of Black Theology 2(1988). 18 Sarojini Nadar, "'Barak God and Die!': Women, Hiv, and a Theology of Suffering," in Voices from the Margin: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World, ed. R.S. Sugirtharajah (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2006). 19 Gerald O. West, "Liberation Hermeneutics," in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Biblical Interpretation, ed. Steven L. McKenzie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 20 Franz J. Hinkelammert, The Ideological Weapons of Death: A Theological Critique of Capitalism (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1986). 21 Klaus Nürnberger, Theology of the Biblical Witness: An Evolutionary Approach (Münster: Lit, 2002); Klaus Nürnberger, Biblical Theology in Outline: The Vitality of the Word of God (Pietermaritzburg; Pretoria: Cluster Pub. ; C.B. Powell Bible Centre, 2004). 6

7 As indicated, the above formulations are mine, but have been carefully reflected on (in a range of languages) both by those of us at the Bogotá workshop and Ujamaa practitioners at a workshop in South Africa a week later. But they are, as is all of our reflection, part of the ongoing process of praxis, and so we will return to them regularly to reflect again in the light of our actual Contextual Bible Study practice. Collaborative work and interpretation Liberation theologies have forged a range of collaborative reading processes, but the focus here is on a form that has developed in South Africa from the mid-1980s. Contextual Bible Study, as it has come to be called, inhabits a collaborative nexus, captured by the six core values, between the epistemology of the poor and marginalised and the critical capacities of socially engaged biblical scholarship. For those socially engaged biblical scholars and theologians who hold to strong notions of hegemony, arguing that the poor and marginalised have been colonised by the dominant ideology and are trapped in a culture of silence, 22 the critical capacities of biblical scholarship are pivotal, providing the theologian who wants to carry out a de-ideologizing task with valuable cognitive tools. 23 However, for others of us who hold to weak notions of ideological hegemony, the apparent silence of the poor and marginalised is not the silence of a consent to hegemony, but the silence of an embodied and lived but yet to be articulated local ideology. 24 Those of us socially engaged biblical scholars who work with a strong sense of the epistemological privilege of the poor and a weak sense of social hegemony recognise that the critical resources of biblical scholarship are brought alongside the array of critical capacities that have already been forged in the sequestered sites of organised communities of the poor and marginalised. These additional critical resources, the tools of the biblical studies discipline, derive their usefulness, in part, from their capacity to render the Bible other. They slow down the interpretive process, 25 facilitating re-reading, re-translation, re-interpretation. Within the contours of Contextual Bible Study, alterity enables re-appropriation for social transformation. 22 Frostin, Liberation Theology in Tanzania and South Africa, 10; alluding to Paulo Freire, The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1985), Segundo, "The Shift within Latin American Theology," 28; Nadar, "Shifting Contextual Bible Study from Liberation Discourse to Liberation Pedagogy; Nadar, "Hermeneutics of Transformation?" 24 Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance; Gerald O. West, "The Not So Silent Citizen: Hearing Embodied Theology in the Context of Hiv and Aids in South Africa," in Heterotopic Citizen: New Research on Religious Work for the Disadvantaged, ed. Trygve Wyller (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009). 25 John Riches et al., What Is Contextual Bible Study? A Practical Guide with Group Studies for Advent and Lent (London: SPCK, 2010), 41. 7

8 There are various ways of describing the Contextual Bible Study praxis, but here I will focus on a series of interconnected movements that shape the collaborative reading process. The overarching movement is that of See-Judge-Act, a process formed in the worker-priest movement in Europe in the s. 26 This movement begins within the organised formations of the poor and marginalised as they analyse ( See ) their context, from below. This analysis of reality is then brought into dialogue with the prophetic voices of the Bible, enabling the God of life to address ( Judge ) the social reality. Through this dialogue with the Bible the shape of the gospel 27 is used to plan a series of actions ( Act ) that will bring about transformation of the social reality, so that all may have life, and have it abundantly. Within this overarching movement there is another movement, from community-consciousness to critical-consciousness to community-consciousness. The See moment of social analysis generates a particular contextual concern that becomes the theme for the Bible study. The engagement with the Bible (the Judge component) begins with a community s thematic appropriation of the biblical text being used ( community-consciousness ), allowing every participant to share their particular understanding of the text. This moment not only makes it clear to the participants that the 26 James R. Cochrane, "Questioning Contextual Theology," in Towards an Agenda for Contextual Theology: Essays in Honour of Albert Nolan, ed. McGlory T. Speckman and Larry T. Kaufmann (Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, 2001), 76-77; West, Biblical Hermeneutics of Liberation, Nolan, God in South Africa: The Challenge of the Gospel. 8

9 Bible study belongs to them, it also offers a reception history of that text s presence in a particular community. The Bible study then moves into a series of re-readings of the text, slowing down the process of interpretation, using the resources of socially engaged biblical scholarship ( critical-consciousness ). The particular sets of critical tools that constitute the trade of biblical scholarship are offered to the participants as additional resources with which to engage the biblical text. After a series of critical-consciousness questions, the Bible study moves back into community-consciousness, as the participants appropriate (en-act) the biblical text for the particular social project identified in the See moment. With respect to the particular biblical criticisms, there is another layer of movement. The movement begins within the See moment with an initial thematic in-front-of-the-text engagement with the text ( community-consciousness ), bringing the generative contextual theme of the community workshop into dialogue with a particular biblical text. The interpretive process then slows down, entering the critical-consciousness moment via a literary engagement with the text. Though a form of critical engagement, the choice to focus begin critical engagement on-the-text offers an egalitarian entry point to critical-consciousness, enabling all participants to engage with the detail of the text. In most cases, literary engagement leads behind-the-text to a socio-historical engagement with the text, as participants probe the world that produced the text, seeking for lines of connection between both the literary dimensions and the socio-historical dimensions of the text and their contextual realities, seeking lines of connection between contemporary communities of faith and struggle and biblical communities of faith and struggle. While these dimensions of the biblical text are the focus of these second and third moments, the process moves in the fourth moment back in-front-of-the-text (into community-consciousness ), as the participants now appropriate this critically reconstituted text for their particular project of social transformation ( Act ). Together, as the example that follows in the next section of the lecture illustrate, these concentric and intersecting movements constitute the Contextual Bible Study process. Facilitation (the term used by the Ujamaa Centre) and animation (the terms used by CEBI) processes are vital to the Contextual Bible Study, enabling both group process the active participation of each participant and the CBS process the slow but steady procession through the three movements of CBS process. 28 Part of the conversion of the socially engaged biblical scholar is becoming re-schooled as a facilitator, collaborating with other community-based facilitators so as to enable participatory transformation. So Contextual Bible Study begins and ends under the control of a particular local community, who use the resources of the Contextual Bible Study, along with a range of other resources, to plan for and implement community-based action. The socially engaged biblical scholar is already involved in the struggles of and work with particular communities for survival, liberation, life, so that the invitation (and motivation) to do Contextual Bible Study together comes from within this larger praxis. More than half a century of liberation hermeneutics has demonstrated the usefulness of the critical capacities of biblical scholarship to particular liberation struggles. More than twenty-five years of Contextual Bible Study has demonstrated 28 Anne Hope and Sally Timmel, Training for Transformation: A Handbook for Community Workers, 4 vols., vol. Book 1 (Gweru: Mambo Press, 1984). 9

10 the usefulness of this particular form of liberation hermeneutics to a range of struggles (both in South Africa and beyond), and it is from these that the examples in the lectures that follow are drawn. Conclusion Contextual Bible Study constructs a safe sequestered site in which communities of the poor and marginalised can be both translators and interpreters, both of their contexts and of their Bibles. Contextual Bible Study also offers access to the detail of the biblical text. This alterity enables liberatory appropriation in African contexts, for other detail unsettles the singular and certain message of the Bible. Claims to a contextually transcendent message serves Africa s ruling elites, forestalling the contending voices that cry out for structural change. 29 Contextual Bible Study as a particular form of liberation hermeneutics occupies a tensive interpretive space in which we risk a decisive ideo-theological framing which enables a collaborative discerning of critical textual detail that is both true to the text s otherness but also potentially useful for particular local contextual struggles. Contextual Bible Study occupies a collaborative nexus between the epistemology of the poor and marginalised and the critical capacities of socially engaged biblical scholarship. The socially engaged biblical scholar who inhabits this collaborative nexus is both accountable to the particular communities of this collaborative praxis and responsible to the disciplinary detail of biblical scholarship. This nexus then is characterised by a dialectical relationship between alterity and appropriation, with appropriation seeking exegesis and exegesis seeking appropriation. The alterity which the detail of biblical scholarship offers to organised poor and marginalised readers of the Bible is a significant resource in appropriations of the Bible for social transformation within a liberation paradigm. And the appropriations of poor and marginalised readers generate their own forms of alterity, summoning the socially engaged biblical scholar to return to the discipline of biblical scholarship in order to discern other detail that might be potentially useful. Biblical liberation hermeneutics as it is construed within the processes of Contextual Bible Study recognises that the distinctive detail of a biblical text (its alterity) and a particular community s appropriation of that text are always partial, in both senses of the term: they are ideo-theologically constituted and incomplete. Contextual Bible Study is not just technique, it is embedded and embodied in a set of core values. Its value derives from these hermeneutical values. References Cochrane, James R. "Questioning Contextual Theology." In Towards an Agenda for Contextual Theology: Essays in Honour of Albert Nolan, edited by McGlory T. Speckman and Larry T. Kaufmann, Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, Gerald O. West, "Unstructural Analysis of the Bible Reinforcing Unstructural Analysis of African Contexts in (South) Africa?" Old Testament Essays 23, no. 3 (2010). 10

11 Dreher, Carlos A. The Walk to Emmaus. São Leopoldo: Centro de Estudos Bíblicos, Dube, Musa W., ed. Other Ways of Reading: African Women and the Bible. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, Freire, Paulo. The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, Frostin, Per. Liberation Theology in Tanzania and South Africa: A First World Interpretation. Lund: Lund University Press, Hinkelammert, Franz J. The Ideological Weapons of Death: A Theological Critique of Capitalism. Maryknoll: Orbis, Hope, Anne, and Sally Timmel. Training for Transformation: A Handbook for Community Workers. 4 vols. Vol. Book 1. Gweru: Mambo Press, Mesters, C. "The Use of the Bible in Christian Communities of the Common People." In The Bible and Liberation: Political and Social Hermeneutics, edited by Norman K. Gottwald and Richard A. Horsley, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, Mesters, Carlos. Defenseless Flower: A New Reading of the Bible. Translated by Francis McDonagh. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, Mesters, Carlos. God's Project. Cape Town: The Theology Exchange Programme, nd. Mofokeng, Takatso. "Black Christians, the Bible and Liberation." Journal of Black Theology 2 (1988): Mosala, Itumeleng J. Biblical Hermeneutics and Black Theology in South Africa. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, Nadar, Sarojini. "'Barak God and Die!': Women, HIV, and a Theology of Suffering." In Voices from the Margin: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World, edited by R.S. Sugirtharajah, Maryknoll: Orbis, Nadar, Sarojini. "Beyond the 'Ordinary Reader' and the 'Invisible Intellectual': Shifting Contextual Bible Study from Liberation Discourse to Liberation Pedagogy." Old Testament Essays 22, no. 2 (2009): Nadar, Sarojini. "'Hermeneutics of Transformation?' A Critical Exploration of the Model of Social Engagement between Biblical Scholars and Faith Communities." In Postcolonial Perspectives in African Biblical Interpretations, edited by Musa W. Dube, Andrew M. Mbuvi and Dora Mbuwayesango, Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, Nolan, Albert. God in South Africa: The Challenge of the Gospel. Cape Town: David Philip, Nürnberger, Klaus. Biblical Theology in Outline: The Vitality of the Word of God. Pietermaritzburg; Pretoria: Cluster Pub. ; C.B. Powell Bible Centre, Nürnberger, Klaus. Theology of the Biblical Witness: An Evolutionary Approach. Münster: Lit, Okure, Teresa. "Feminist Interpretation in Africa." In Searching the Scriptures: A Feminist Introduction, edited by Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, New York: Crossroads, Riches, John, Helen Ball, Roy Henderson, Craig Lancaster, Leslie Milton, and Maureen Russell. What Is Contextual Bible Study? A Practical Guide with Group Studies for Advent and Lent. London: SPCK, Schinelo, Edmilson, ed. The Bible and Popular Education; Encounters of Solidarity and Dialogue. São Leopoldo: CEBI, Schipani, Daniel S., Martien Brinkman, and Hans Snoek, eds. New Perspectives on 11

12 Intercultural Reading of the Bible: Hermeneutical Explorations in Honor of Hans De Wit. Elkhart: Institute of Mennonite Studies, Scott, James C. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, Segundo, Juan Luis. "The Shift within Latin American Theology." Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 52 (1985): Ukpong, Justin S. "Rereading the Bible with African Eyes." Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 91 (1995): West, Gerald O. "Africa s Liberation Theologies: An Historical-Hermeneutical Analysis." In The Changing World Religion Map: Sacred Places, Identities, Practices and Politics, edited by Stanley D. Brunn, Dordrecht, Heidelberg, New York, London: Springer, West, Gerald O. Biblical Hermeneutics of Liberation: Modes of Reading the Bible in the South African Context. Second Edition ed. Maryknoll and Pietermaritzburg: Orbis Books and Cluster Publications, West, Gerald O. Contextual Bible Study. Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications, West, Gerald O. "Liberation Hermeneutics." In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Biblical Interpretation, edited by Steven L. McKenzie, Oxford: Oxford University Press, West, Gerald O. "Locating Contextual Bible Study within Praxis." Diaconia 4 (2013): West, Gerald O. "Newsprint Theology: Bible in the Context of Hiv and Aids." In Out of Place: Doing Theology on the Crosscultural Brink, edited by Jione Havea and Clive Pearson, London: Equinox Publishing, West, Gerald O. "The Not So Silent Citizen: Hearing Embodied Theology in the Context of Hiv and Aids in South Africa." In Heterotopic Citizen: New Research on Religious Work for the Disadvantaged, edited by Trygve Wyller, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, West, Gerald O. "Tracing the 'Kairos' Trajectory from South Africa (1985) to Palestine (2009): Discerning Continuities and Differences." Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 143 (2012): West, Gerald O. "Unstructural Analysis of the Bible Reinforcing Unstructural Analysis of African Contexts in (South) Africa?" Old Testament Essays 23, no. 3 (2010): West, Gerald O., and Musa W. Dube, eds. "Reading With": African Overtures, Semeia. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, Wittenberg, Gunther. Resistance Theology in the Old Testament: Collected Essays. Pietermaritzburg: Cluster Publications,